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Most fashion fans scrolling through Instagram for the first time on Boxing Day probably expected photographs of illuminated Christmas trees and piles of presents to dominate their feeds. Instead, they found tribute after tribute to George Michael, who died on Christmas Day.

The pop superstar and prolific songwriter was behind many of the anthems of the 1980s and '90s- and his videos were the crossroads for the worlds of fashion and music.

George Michael and Linda Evangelista

Nowhere was this more true than in 'Freedom! '90'. The video starred the five leading supermodels of the day - Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford and Tatjana Patitz- lip-syncing to Michael's lyrics.

The video was inspired by photographer Peter Lindbergh's January 1990 cover of British Vogue which showed models in a refreshingly honest way - a revolutionary move after the gloss and glamour of the previous decade.

"They were the kind of models who were really independent, joyful and sporty, but – most importantly – they were strong in themselves. I thought that should be the future," Lindbergh recently told The Telegraph of that era-defining image.

By this morning, those models were among the dozens of fashion insiders sharing their memories of Michael, 53, on the social network.

Campbell posted two pictures: one from the 1991 Versace show in which she, Evangelista, Crawford and Turlington walked the runway arm in arm, mouthing the lyrics from Freedom, and another of Michael's face.